Telerik Makes Framework for JavaScript Available via Open Source

With strong roots in the Microsoft ecosystem, Telerik has always been part of the commercial software landscape. But starting today Telerik, a provider of application development tools, is embracing open source. The company today announced Telerik Kendo UI Core, an open source implementation of the JavaScript framework and user interface tools that Telerik created for its cross-platform application development environments.

Brandon Satrom, lead product manager at Telerik, says that by making available an open source version of its Javascript framework Telerik is obviously trying to increase the base of developers familiar with the company’s application development platform. Telerik will continue to offer a commercial version of Kendo UI for building enterprise class applications. But the core JavaScript framework itself can now be used by any developer under an open source license.

Telerik currently has 20,000 to 25,000 customers. Satrom says there are two to three million developers, so by making Telerik Kendo UI Core available, Telerik expects there be over 100,000 developers that eventually will be familiar with its Javascript environment.

Unlike other open source Javascript frameworks, Telerik has a vested interest in continuing to invest in developing a Javascript framework that is a core element of one of its major commercial development environments.

Available via Github or Telerik.com, Telerik Kendo UI Core includes 38 UI widgets, including all of Kendo UI Mobile and core framework features, such as templates, data binding, and input validation; thousands of tests and best practices; and integration with Bootstrap and UI widgets ready for use with libraries like AngularJS.

Satrom says that as an alternative to JQuery UI, the Telerik Kendo UI widgets are intended to provide access to graphical tools that will be regularly updated by major tools vendor.

As JavaScript continues to become the defacto standard for building Web applications there is no shortage of frameworks for developers to choose from. The good news is that while there are a lot of well-documented issues with working with JavaScript, the emergence of more frameworks for JavaScript means that the scripting language is finally getting easier to work with from both a performance perspective and the quality of the code generated.